February 15 - Politicians Offering Prayers Instead of Solutions; How Society Failed the Victims and the Shooter; The Culture of Violence in America's Disposable Society

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the mass shooting which took place yesterday at a high school in Florida which has left 17 dead and 14 injured with 5 in critical condition. Doug Phillips, the assistant city editor at the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale who is a few miles away from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, joins us to discuss what his reporters in the field are finding out today about the 19 year old shooter Nicholas Cruz and the victims and their families. We discuss the reactions from Florida’s Governor who allowed the possibility of looking into the connection between mental illness and access to assault rifles, and the different responses from Florida Senator Marco Rubio who has an A+ approval rating from the NRA as opposed to Florida’s Democratic Senator Ben Nelson who is not afraid to ask the obvious question as to how this troubled young man who telegraphed his violent intentions on social media was not flagged by the FBI but was able to buy a military-style assault rifle.

Part 2

Then we  speak with Kenneth Nunn, a Professor of Law at the University of Florida and the Associate Director of the Center on Children and Families. He joins us to discuss how society clearly failed the 17 innocents who were killed at what should be a safe place of learning and also how society failed the troubled 19 year old shooter who had lost both parents and was displaying violent and threatening anti-social behavior on social media. Why he was never given help, counselling or treatment yet was able to purchase an assault rifle, remains an open question?

Part 3

Then finally we examine our culture of violence and America’s disposable society where not just the homeless population of disposable people is growing, but an all-but homeless 19 year old had become so alienated from his more affluent peers and seduced by violent white supremacist fantasies that he sought vindication and notoriety by slaughtering his classmates. Henry Giroux, who holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and is the author of “The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism” and “America at War with Itself”, joins us.